Author: Don McMinn

Several years ago I attended a concert at the Nasher Sculpture Center in downtown Dallas. About 80 audience members stood in a circle around the musicians. A baritone soloist and six disparate instruments performed Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies. Completed in 1969 it is one of the most distinctive and disturbing musical compositions of the twentieth century. The eight songs document the imagined events from King George III’s famous and well-documented descent into insanity.  

It’s a disconcerting 30-minute composition. Hard to listen to. The vocal soloist sings, shrieks, yells, and gesticulates. The instruments play chaotically. There are few melodic figures and no formal structure. 

After the concert, the audience was invited to a reception. I struck up a conversation with a fellow audience member. Midway through the conversation she asked me, “What did you think of the Davies’ composition?” My response: “I didn’t like it at all. It was too esoteric; it was hard to listen to; musically it made no sense.” She calmly and gently responded: “Don’t you realize, the music was portraying the mind of an insane person. It represented how a mad person thinks.”

I’ll never forget her gentle rebuke; it was both instructive and challenging. I think of it often. 

One of the hardest things to do in life is to “get into another person’s mind” and think and feel as he or she does. We live in our own minds 24/7 so it’s hard to imagine how other people experience the world. 

• When I board a plane my mind is peaceful. What is it like to be afraid of flying?
• What goes on in the mind of someone who suffers from bipolar disorder?
• How does a special needs person view the world?
• Being Stoic by nature and choice, I find it hard to imagine how an emotionally robust person interacts with the world.

Let’s experiment with this concept. Think of someone you know well and try to mentally enter into his world; try to think and feel as he might. Consider their fears, insecurities, blind spots, emotional imbalances, hurts, personal history, family of origin issues, hopes, and dreams. What does he think and feel when he enters a new social environment?

While it’s hard for us to imagine what life is like experienced through another person’s mind, we should try. Otherwise, we’ll not truly understand other people and our empathy will be misinformed or lacking. 

Here’s a video of a performance of Davies’ work. I’ll give a wooden nickel to anyone who can watch the entire video.

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That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more. —Popeye

Do you remember the cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor Man? He was long-suffering and took a lot of abuse from bullies. But there would come a time when he had endured all he could. His patience exhausted, he would say, “That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.” Then he’d crack open a can of spinach, consume it in one gulp, his muscles would grow, and then he’d beat up the bad guys.

Sometimes, we need to have a “Popeye moment.”

Here are some areas to think about.

Distance yourself from unhealthy relationships.

Karl Albrecht suggests, “You can ‘fire’ anyone from your life whom you find toxic and disaffirming to your personhood.” Granted, some relationships are easier to jettison than others (it’s easier to disengage from a colleague at work than from a family member), but to one degree or another, you can and should distance yourself from injurious relationships. You may need to “fire” a customer or a friend or a neighbor. Offer “pink slips” to people who don’t belong in your life.

If you’re overcommitted, cut back.

The Plimsoll line is a reference mark located on a ship’s hull that indicates the maximum depth to which the vessel may be safely immersed when loaded with cargo. If you put more cargo on the ship than recommended, bad things can happen.

In like manner, every human has a “personal Plimsoll line” that indicates how much “cargo” he or she can negotiate. We all have different capacities so you need to determine what your limit is and stay under it.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed you’re probably overcommitted. Analyze all your commitments by asking this question. “If I wasn’t currently doing this, would I start doing it now?” If the answer is no, perhaps you should hit the delete button.

Position yourself so that when you need to, you can push back on unacceptable situations.

You may want to flee an uncomfortable situation but you can’t because there are no good alternatives. You’ve painted yourself into a corner and have no options. It may take time to reposition, but ultimately you need to build in some margin and options so you can aggressively respond to distasteful situations. A friend advised me to always have six months of “go-to-hell money” in my savings account. “That way, if your job becomes unbearable,” he said, “you can tell your boss what you think and then walk away.”

Often, we slowly drift into intolerable situations, which makes them harder to see.

The “boiling frog anecdote” describes a frog slowly being boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will slowly be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to respond to threats that develop gradually. These situations are usually the hardest to recognize. The slow slip into jeopardy is so subtle that we are unaware of the descent.

Let me give a prosaic example of a slow drift into an intolerable situation. Over the course of about nine months I slowly developed a serious sinus infection. If I had been stricken by the flu I would have recognized it; if I had had a heart attack it would have been obvious. But the gradual descent into nasal catastrophe was so subtle that I didn’t respond aggressively; I just developed increasing tolerance for the yucky symptoms. I finally had a Popeye Moment, made an appointment with an ENT physician, and the problem was solved.

Audit your life and determine if you’re tolerating an uncomfortable or compromising situation. If you are, allow yourself a Popeye Moment—“That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more”— then follow through and change the situation.

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[callout]This article – from New York magazine, June 11-24, 2018 – will keep you awake at night. [/callout]

According to American business historian Robert Sobel, the British government created a civil-service job in 1803 which called for a man to stand on the white cliffs of Dover with a spyglass and to ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. Napoleon died in 1821; the job continued until 1945.

Insanity surrounds us:

• Arizona – It is illegal for donkeys to sleep in bathtubs.
• Florida – If an elephant is left tied to a parking meter, the parking fee has to be paid just as it would for a vehicle.
• Kentucky – One may not dye a duckling blue and offer it for sale unless more than six are for sale at once.

Peter Drucker coined the phrase “organized abandonment” to describe the process whereby we can free up resources that are committed to maintaining things that no longer contribute to performance and no longer produce results.

According to Drucker, the change-leader puts every product, every service, every process, every customer, and every end use on trial for its life. The question to ask is, “If we did not do this already, would we, knowing what we now know, go into it?” If the answer is no, abandon it. The change-leader must also ask, “If we were to go into this now, knowing what we now know, would we go into it in the same way we are doing it now?’” [Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, pg.74]

The term organized means doing this regularly and on a systematic basis.

Over time, organizations and individuals become burdened by unproductive and unnecessary actions. On a regular basis we must ruthlessly evaluate all functions and jettison those that no longer contribute.

In your personal life, organized abandonment might probe these areas:

• Do I still benefit from reading a physical daily newspaper or should I get my news digitally?
• Is there a healthier alternative to my typical breakfast?
• If I was not currently living in my neighborhood, would I choose to move here?
• Have some of my relationships grown stale; would I benefit from new, more invigorating relationships?

In your organization, probe these areas:

• As I consider every position in my organization, is each one still needed?
• Do I have the right people in key positions?
• If I had the opportunity to fill a position, would I hire the same person who is presently working in that position?
• As I analyze every line item of the budget, are all expenditures still justified?
• Are our products still viable?
• Are there any customers we should “fire”?

Another approach to this topic is to regularly adjust your life using the Keep—Stop—Start formula:

I want to keep doing, or do more of _______.
I want to stop doing, or do less of _______.
I want to start doing _______.

“We’ve always done it that way” is a feeble justification for any activity.

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In the epic biblical story of David and Goliath, David was confident that he could kill the giant because, “Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them” (1 Samuel 17:36).

Young David was prepared for a large task because he had been successful in smaller ones (though one might argue that slaying a lion and a bear are not small tasks).

Often in life, we can learn important skills in small settings and then transfer them to larger ones. Learning is maximized when we realize that the small setting can be a training exercise. 

I once read that a well-known management consultant (I can’t remember the name) advised recent MBA graduates to work for one year at a big-box store (Home Depot, Staples) because they would be exposed to every aspect of a business (income, expenses, personnel, inventory, ordering and receiving products, marketing, customer relations, etc.). It would be a fast track to learn how to lead a large organization.  

Leaders, if you learn how to properly manage a small team of people—perhaps four or five—you can use the same skills to supervise a large group. If you learn how to cast vision in a small organization, you can use the same principles in a large one. If you train yourself to be emotionally intelligent at home, the same skills will work in the marketplace. Learn leadership lessons in a small setting because they will transfer into a larger one, and the inevitable failures that occur while learning will be less consequential in a small setting.  

Most skills, traits, and concepts are transferable; once you master them in a small environment they will scale up. But if you don’t know how to utilize them in a small setting, you won’t use them in a large one.

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